Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 292

# Catalog Note

Moke Horner, the Boss Roustabout; or, The Fresh-Water Sharks of the Overflow is a serialized romance of Mississippi River life by Joseph E. Badger, Jr., set in New Orleans in 1844. The narrative opens in Pere Godet's Tri-color saloon, a dual establishment divided between white and Black patrons, where tensions erupt between Yellow Jack Tandy, a portly mulatto roustabout, and Moke Horner, an elegantly dressed Black man claiming mastery of the Mississippi. Their encounter escalates into a supernatural contest involving conjuring and folk magic—specifically, the power of a rabbit-foot charm. Horner's apparent hypnotic influence over Tandy through ritualistic manipulation of his rabbit-foot fetish dominates the chapter, with onlookers held in superstitious awe as Tandy struggles helplessly to obey Horner's increasingly humiliating commands. The tale blends frontier adventure with folk superstition motifs characteristic of period river narratives.